Conversations with a Dead Girl
by silvercage
Summary: [AU, ONESHOT] Gaara is confronted by the ghost of the girl that he killed.


**Conversations with a Dead Girl**

A Gaara-Sakura Oneshot

Gaara squeezed in past the rickety door with peeling paint into his small, shabby apartment that he could barely afford. He strode across the floor, oblivious to the mess of old food containers, dirty clothes, used needles and the like. He flung open the door to the small bathroom that smelled faintly of mildew and turned on the cold water tap with a violent tug. He splashed the icy liquid on his face, which turned pink as it rolled through the splatters of dried blood on his hollow cheeks. Gaara picked up a towel with frayed edges which he had unceremoniously thrown in a corner earlier and viciously began to rub at his face.

Throwing the towel down once more, the redhead took a minute to stare at his reflection. Dirty, unruly hair, sunken eyes stained black with insomnia, pale, sickly, blotchy skin. Gaara scowled and turned away.

"Jesus!" he half yelled, jumping back and hitting the counter. Standing in front of him was a girl with matted pink hair and a bloody, bashed in head. She was staring at Gaara with a half-dazed expression on her face, and a penetrating look in her left eye; the right was buried beneath the gore of the girl's head wound. Despite her condition, the redhead had no trouble placing her face, as much as he wished he did.

The girl cocked her head to the side, taking in the sight of the skinny man in front of her. "You killed me," she said as though she was looking for confirmation.

Gaara straightened himself out. He was hallucinating; it happened all the time to him. He never saw humans though, just shapeless monsters. But then again, he reasoned within the confines of his head, it would only make sense that he would be seeing _her_ after what happened. "Go away," he said simply, as though he saw dead girls all the time.

"I can't," the pink haired girl said simply.

"Why are you in my apartment?" Gaara asked, not at all thinking it strange that he was having a conversation with the hallucination of a girl that had died half an hour ago.

"Why were you in mine?" the girl retorted, a different tone in her voice. Resentment, anger. "I know you heard me coming out of my room," she continued, "You could have left; you were still in the doorway. Why didn't you leave?" she demanded.

"I don't need to justify myself to you," he hissed, leaving the bathroom and slamming the door behind him and storming into the small living room.

"Well you need to do something," the girl said, appearing before Gaara once more.

Gaara was starting to get pissed; this wasn't a fun hallucination. "Look, don't you have some better place to get to? That's what they all say, or is it just a lie?"

"It's real," the girl said, "But I can't get there. You're in the way." Gaara stepped aside and gestured for the girl to walk past him. "Not physically, crack head," the girl snapped.

Gaara threw himself down on his half-broken down couch that doubled as his bed. "Go away," he said again.

Seeing that her original plan was not about to work, the girl decided to change her approach.

"I know all about you, Gaara," the girl said simply, "Your life, your past, what those needles were used for; everything. It's all written above your head. About your sister Temari at Yale, and Kankuro in New York. And what your father did to you when—"

"Shut up!" Gaara snapped at the disfigured girl.

"Help me pass on, and you can forget all about me the next time you shoot up. If you don't help me, I swear to God, I'll haunt you until the day you die."

The red haired man sneered. He was being blackmailed by a hallucination of a dead girl.

"I'm not a hallucination!" she finally snapped, causing Gaara to jump out of his skin, "My name was Haruno Sakura, and I'm not in my body anymore because of you!"

"Doesn't sound so bad," Gaara muttered under his breath.

"The hell it isn't!" she shrieked in a high-pitched, ear-splitting voice, "Maybe it wouldn't be for you, but I want my life back! I had a boyfriend and a mother and a bunch of other people who wanted me to be around. I was in medical school; I was going to be a doctor and help people. And now it's all gone because some crack head broke into my apartment and clubbed my head in! You could have left! Why didn't you? None of this would have happened if you would have used your damn head! You're just a class-A screw up, aren't you? Just like your daddy always said."

Gaara abruptly stood up and held out his finger to the girl. "You shut up," he hissed, "You have no idea what you're talking about. You're just a spoiled little bitch who had it coming."

The girl stomped her foot like a child. "I didn't, and you know that," she yelled in the man's face, "You made a string of bad decisions and I'm paying for it now. I have nothing now, and it's all your fault! I had a life, I had things to live for!"

"Well, there's nothing I can do about it now, is there?" Gaara shouted in reply and dropped back to the couch. His hands were starting to shake; it had been a long time since his last fix. That's why he was breaking in to people's homes; he was out of money. For the first time in almost five years, Gaara's mind wasn't clouded with the euphoria of drugs. It was just him in his head now, him and his raging emotions. Tears started to slip out of his eyes. It was almost surprising; Gaara had never cried before.

"I'm sorry," he sobbed, and looked up. He was alone in his small, shabby apartment once more. "I'm so sorry."


End file.
